


Tea for Two

by Owl_by_Night



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Implied Past Trauma, M/M, Post-War, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 17:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14623629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owl_by_Night/pseuds/Owl_by_Night
Summary: Collins and Farrier after the war, drinking tea and living their lives together





	Tea for Two

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [hightide2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/hightide2018) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Slice-of-life post-war established relationship domestic fluff of any and all varieties. e.g. setting up home, or going on a foreign holiday for the first time, or dealing with mundane jobs, etc. Bonus points for residual underlying war trauma (physical and/or psychological).
> 
>  
> 
> I've taken a very narrow slice of life (just the time it takes for a couple of cups of tea) but I hope it gives you enough of a glimpse into where life has taken them and there is a lot of domestic fluff! I hope you enjoy it :)

Collins wakes them up with nightmares, which means it's Farrier's turn to pad downstairs to the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea. The kitchen is cool this early in the day, although the weather has been unusually warm of late. There's a clear blue sky and the sun is shining brightly on their little square of garden. The flowers they planted last year have risen up again, blooming red and pink and yellow as they planned. It had been a good feeling at the time to bed them in, planning a future that stretched to years. Farrier looks at them now with a newly learned gardener's eye and plans the work that still needs doing. He hums to himself while the kettle boils. 

The cat hops up onto the window sill to push his head affectionately against Farrier’s arm, then jumps down and twines about Farrier's ankles, asking for breakfast. 

"You're supposed to be hunting mice," Farrier tells him. The cat mews, opening his pink mouth wide and wrinkling his whiskers up. He head butts Farrier again. Their dog is politer, sitting by her bowl with her tail thumping quietly against the ground. The Collins family is good at collecting strays. Farrier suspects he is one of them: ex-RAF pilot, in need of taming and reintroducing to society. He's been adopted since the first time they met him and Collins' mother started sizing him up for a knitted jumper. The thought still makes him smile. 

When the animals are fed and the tea is made, Farrier heads back upstairs. He's deliberately given Collins some time to get himself together after the dreams that had woken him, sweaty haired and clinging to Farrier's shoulder, not screaming but breathing so fast and deep that the scream had been implied. The nightmares are a familiar occurrence. They both have plenty to dream about. Collins falls from the sky, burning, or finds himself surrounded by ghosts. Farrier goes back to solitary confinement or gliding above Dunkirk, powerless and helpless forever, waiting. Laws or no laws, there has never been a question of doing anything but sharing a bed after they moved in together. They both need to know that someone else is near. 

For the moment Collins looks better though, his colour coming back. He must have got up to pull the curtains open because he's sitting with his face turned up to the sunshine. The sight of him makes Farrier relax a little. He worries about Collins: has done from the day the blue eyed baby pilot showed up fresh out of training and threw himself into a dogfight with reckless disregard for his own safety. Farrier has been watching out for him ever since. 

"Alright?" Farrier asks him from the doorway, so Collins isn't startled if his thoughts have wandered. "Tea's ready." 

"Thanks," Collins says, smiling and scrubbing his hands through his hair. "It was a bad one, but it's over now." 

They drink tea together in an easy silence: the two of them have become so comfortable in each other's company that being together is enough. It was like that in the RAF, the two of them side by side in the dispersals hut, not needing to say anything at all, but it hadn’t been a luxury they'd thought to keep. 

"It'll be another warm day," Farrier says. The sun from the window is growing hotter through the fabric of his pyjamas. 

"Mmm... I'm glad I'm not working." Collins nudges him and settles his head against Farrier's shoulder in much the same way as the cat. His hair tickles Farrier's chin. "Too hot for sitting in an office in uniform." 

Collins still works for the RAF although the war is more than two years past. At university in Edinburgh before the war, he'd thought of other careers but afterwards all those options had lost their appeal. The RAF had made him so much a pilot that he'd forgotten how to be anything else, although his last crash had meant he wouldn't fly again. He does his work well and enjoys it, even though he’s desk bound, and nobody looks twice at the marks the war left on him. 

Farrier couldn't stay in the RAF after his return from the POW camp. He couldn't stay anywhere with a strict routine in fact, despite persistent attempts at recruitment by one of the government agencies. He'd drifted, then settled here, drawn back to Collins by a connection that started against the odds in the middle of war and flourished despite trials and distance. 

There are a few thumps and bangs from next door: the usual morning sounds of a household waking up. Farrier thinks again of the Collins family and their propensity for collecting strays. Collins has a sister living next door, and Helen's husband works at the same RAF base. Collins introduced them. Their other sister Mary calls the house home whenever she stops roaming across Europe and the village accepted another Collins sibling with ease. Farrier has been accepted in turn. If any eyebrows were raised at the two of them living together, by now they are old news. Something of a fixture of village life. Unremarkable. 

Farrier works occasional shifts in the pub, plays on the village cricket team and otherwise writes for a living. Not what he'd planned before the war either, but telling stories had kept him sane as a POW and afterwards the words had come flooding out onto paper, often in the middle of the night. Collins had worried at first, until Farrier had settled and the desperate urge to clear his memories had turned into something calmer. He writes, under a pseudonym, a series of children's books of high adventure and daring do. He still threatens to write something serious, one day, based on those first, scribbled manuscripts that are locked away in a case beneath the bed, but for now he is content to write about a world where the stories end happily. 

He ponders the latest story as he sits there, empty mug in hand. Helen's girls want another book 'for them' and he's been thinking of something set by the sea. There ought to be a dog, and something with caves. He loses himself until Collins nudges him with an elbow. 

"We should get up," Collins tells him, draining his mug but making no other move towards actually doing so. 

"Yes, it's a long drive." 

"Important day," Collins says, smiling at him. Farrier has always liked that smile. He's a lucky bastard, getting to see it every day. 

"I suppose so." Farrier smiles. It's their anniversary. Seven years since Collins stopped Farrier on their way home from the pub, safe in the darkness of the blackout, and kissed him. Farrier had asked him if he meant it or if he was drunk and Collins had told him he'd had to have enough drinks to be brave enough to try. They won’t get a wedding anniversary, but they can mark this. 

Farrier must be looking soppy, remembering, because Collins kneels up in bed and kisses him on the temple. "Another cup of tea before we get up?" 

This time it is Collins who goes down to the kitchen and Farrier who lays in bed, savouring the chance to be lazy and listening to the familiar sounds of the village going about its day. Normally he would be getting up and about his day. He writes best in the mornings and then manages the work in the cottage. A decent vegetable garden is emerging, which Collins helps with at weekends. Farrier is learning to cook too, although with rationing and inexperience there have been a few disasters that drove them to the pub for dinner. 

Collins reappears with the tea and the paper tucked under one arm. There's a packet of biscuits in his dressing gown pocket, which really does mean it's a holiday. The cat follows him, stalking across the eiderdown to settle on Farrier's lap. Next door a door bangs, and Helen's children go shrieking into the garden to play. Once the bang would have made Farrier flinch: he notices his own lack of reaction and is pleased. It gets easier as time passes. 

Collins offers him the paper and the biscuit packet, followed by his mug. The cat, offended by falling crumbs, leaps down and goes about his own feline business. There are plentiful mice in the farm behind the cottage and he has no time for humans who won't pay him he appropriate attention. 

"I was thinking," Collins says around his piece of shortbread, "perhaps we shouldn't rush off. Perhaps there are other things we could be doing first." 

"Yes," Farrier says, "I was thinking that the garden needed some work." 

"That was really not what I..."

"Or there's the kitchen table needing mending."

"And whose fault is that, that it broke in the first place?"

"Yours, I should have thought. You said you couldn't wait..."

"Farrier," Collins growls, "if you keep talking nonsense..." 

Farrier grabs him before he can say more, pulling Collins up until he settles between Farrier's thighs. He kisses him quiet. 

The second cup of tea grows cold beside the bed.


End file.
